Encouraging Weekend for Liz Halliday at Tweseldon
Equestrian News Release

Surrey-based Californian Liz Halliday left the Tweseldown Horse Trials having accomplished the goals she set herself approaching the event; to regain confidence in Oscar (Arctic Knight) and prepare Harry (Silken Crisp), for an important upcoming competition.

Halliday competed in the Intermediate section with Oscar and her aim was to rebuild both their confidence, after a difficult cross country ride at Salperton two weeks previously. Liz and Oscar enjoyed a very good cross country round at Tweseldown, even though the show jumping round wasn’t up to Liz’s high standards. However, Halliday declared that she was happy with their performance on the whole.

“Oscar was a good boy today. He did a great dressage, as expected, but after a good start, the show jumping didn’t go quite so well. We got a bad distance into the first double and that threw him a bit, so we had a few rails down. Luckily, a great clear cross country made up for the show jumping.

“Oscar is a very talented horse but he wants quite a different ride than most of the horses I’ve had before. I think on the cross country, I finally began to figure him out. Hopefully we can put all three phases together at the next event.”

Liz then went on to compete in the Open Intermediate section with Harry, looking to prepare him for his next event, his first Advanced competition at Gatcombe Park. Again, Liz and Harry enjoyed a solid performance; “I wanted to have a good event with Harry but I wasn’t there to go fast and necessarily try to win. This was his first cross country round since the Tweseldown CCI** in May and I wanted a good preparation event for Gatcombe.

“Harry did a respectable dressage test but in the show jumping, he got a little wild and had two rails down. But, despite that, I was actually very pleased with his jumping. His cross country was also good and apart from a trip at the second to last, when he stumbled to his knees on landing, he pulled it back together for a clear round finish.”

Both Oscar and Harry will compete again on 30th July at the Wilton Horse Trials in Wiltshire. However, Halliday will not get a chance to rest, as she crosses the Atlantic to compete in her other sporting discipline, endurance sports car racing, for the next two rounds of the American Le Mans Series (ALMS). Halliday leads the LMP2 category and will be driving the same car in which she completed this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans a month ago.